Roly’s Brothers Grimm Cinderella to Disney Cinderella Comparison

Disney could not have made an exact remake of the fairytale. The Brothers Grimm telling is not Disney acceptable; more on that later. The Movie, of course has, Cinderella, a wicked stepmother, and wicked stepsisters. Cinderella goes to a ball, meets a prince, and lives happily ever after.

For all of you who love the Fairy Godmother, don’t get your hopes up for the fairytale. Both the Fairy Godmother and the mice are never in the book. The birds take the place of the mice, and, oddly enough, there is a tree instead of the Fairy Godmother. Cinderella does not change from fairytale to movie. Her mother tells her, before she dies, that Cinderella must always be good and kind. This is the reason, not her fathers death, that she serves the Stepmother unquestioningly. We never even hear that the father dies in the story. So either he died, didn’t know how evil the stepmother was, or didn’t care.

The tree is, in fact, a magical tree that Cinderella planted over her mother’s grave. Each night that Cinderella goes to the ball (yes it is multiple nights in the story), she asks the tree to shake and pour silver down on her. The tree gives a little wiggle each night, and gives her dresses of increasing beauty. Cinderella goes to the ball each night and dances with the prince. She gets away before he and his guards can find her. The book doesn’t give a reason, but my theory is he got too handsy.

The prince pours pitch down on the steps, so that she would get stuck, on the last night. She gets her feet out of her slippers and goes merrily on her way. The prince finds the slipper she left behind. He orders every maiden in the town to put the royal Nike on her foot. In the movie, the finding of the royal Nike is due to Cinderella having to run back before midnight because the Fairy Godmother had placed a deadline of midnight. The tree was nicer and didn’t.

The final major difference is the best part. This part would not make it into a Disney movie. The stepsisters, when it is their turn to put the shoe on, find that it doesn’t fit. The stepmother then councils them to cut off the pieces of their feet that won’t fit, because “when they are queen, they won’t need to walk.” As if this wasn’t “bad” enough, once they are discovered and Cinderella goes to marry the prince, they lose their eyes too. They stand on either side of Cinderella at the wedding. Remember the bird friends I mentioned earlier? This is where they come in. They come and peck an eye out of each of the sisters. Then, once the step sisters get THAT bandaged, they go back to Cinderella. The birds then peck their other eyes out.